


A Temporary Home

by slash4femme



Category: NCIS
Genre: A little angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 11:10:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3894178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slash4femme/pseuds/slash4femme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time takes some time off to write and think</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Temporary Home

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ in 2012. It is ubeta'd, sorry folks. Just a quick character study I did on the fly.

There is part of Tim that wants this, just this, the house out in the middle of nowhere nothing but lush green hills and forests all around. The house it small, two bedrooms, but the kitchen is large and there's a screened in porch, where he likes to sit and write. It's quiet here, a tiny island with a boat that comes every couple days to drop off the food he orders over the phone. There are no sounds of people or street noise at all, just bird noise and the wind through the trees and the sound of the sea. It's beautiful here, he thinks he'll use the setting for his next book, after he's finished with this one. 

Tim writes everyday. He gets up early and makes coffee and then pads out to the porch on sock covered feet to see what kind of day it's going to be. If it is not raining he fetches his laptop and sits on one of the porch chairs, coffee cup on the table beside him along with the research for his latest novel. 

It is a different kind of process from getting home late, still smelling of gun residue and death. Usually he takes a shower and then pounds out a chapter before collapsing. The writing is not easier here, with minimal distractions and nothing else to do but write, just that the rhythm is different. Some days he picks his way through a hundred words over his first cup of coffee. While sometimes he finishes a whole chapter in the time it takes for the coffee to go cold on the table next to him. 

Tim's backlist at this point is respectable but this is the first time he's made the space to just do the writing instead of squeezing it in between other things; family, dating, his job. Mostly the job. He loves his work at NCIS would never truly be happy just doing the writing and he knows that, he just wishes, sometimes it could always be like this. Sometimes wishes he could stay in this quiet place. Leaving him with the trees, the wind and the words and nothing more to think about. 

It's just a vacation though, the first he's had in longer then he wants to think about. Soon he'll go back to DC, back to squeezing in the writing in the early hours of the morning before work and the late hours of the night after getting home. Right now though he has all the time in the world. 

He's teaching himself how to cook. Tim has always thought his cooking skills were adequate but basic. His mother had taught him how to cook a couple things but nothing fancy. Over the last year his eating habits have grown increasingly unhealthy. Tim has always eaten a lot while stressed but over the last year he'd swung the other way and stopped eating hardly at all. 

This last year has been stressful, more than he really wants to think about, work is always stressful at NCIS but this year has weighed more heavily on him than previous years had. Writings been stressful too, his first book did so well, sold so many copies, got such good reviews. Everyone seems to expect every book he writes to be that good, he's been working on letting that go and getting to a point where he'll feel okay if not every book is best seller. It's hard though, he feels like a looser more times than not. He's almost thirty five he doesn't want to be the geeky looser everyone laughs at any more. 

So learning to cook nice food well and learning to enjoy eating it again is a goal he's set for himself while on this trip. There is really only two goal for this vacation actually: finish the manuscript and eat good food. He figures he can handle that. 

It is a process; both cooking and writing. His whole life seems to be a process, Tim thinks leaning against the counter watching the mushrooms brown in butter. With cooking or writing though there is a finished product, something to be proud of or to take a hard look at and decide what to do better with next time. On the other hand being a NCIS agent is all about the process, the journey not the destination. Maybe life falls somewhere between the two, he hopes so at least. 

After dinner he moves back out onto the porch turning on the lamp that sits on the table. There is a strong breeze coming off the sea, it makes him shiver and wrap his arms around himself. He needs to go back inside and put on a sweater. 

Overhead seabirds weal and call to one another, and for a few long moments Tim strains to see through the coming dark and make out the thin line of grey which is the sea . Finally he pulls back up the document he's been working on and puts his hands to the keyboard again. 

He'll miss it here, he thinks later that night in bed, but he'll be happy to go back too. In a week or so he'll be back in Washington to start the process of being Gibbs' agent and Tony, Ziva, Abby, Ducky and Palmer's coworker again. 

Only this time he'll do it better.    
  



End file.
